Damien has over a decade of professional writing experience under his belt, as well as a repulsively hairy belly. Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded.

Given Zelda and Mario in the machine’s first year, they’re going to need to bring some big guns at E3 to achieve such figures, such as the aforementioned SSB5 or Pokémon. I hope that’s the case and this isn’t just getting cocky. Nintendo do that occasionally. It doesn’t usually work out well for them.

The fact that they also expect to sell 4 million 3DSes means that they are dead set on keeping that little system alive for a little longer.

And more power to them, but please... make some of the big games cross ports for the Switch. It still baffles me that they wouldnt put the Luigi's Mansion remake on the Switch (unless they're holding out on that announcement).

Hmm, 20m this year can be done if they release Smash and Pokemon games.
What I would like to know is what Ninty is planning for 2019/20, I can see for certain Metroid 4 and Bayonetta 3 in 2019, however, these two games are not big guns, they certainly sell very well but are not on the same caliber as Mario for instance, so I wonder what Nintendo can bring in 2019 to attract more sales?

Well, we got the surprise Mario + Rabbids... This opens up possibilities to more interesting stuff. I'm not expecting a big third party publisher making a Switch exclusive, but I wouldn't be too surprised.

Obviously the question is are they saying that to entice share holders or do they know something? Or a bit of both. If Pokemon was to be announced at E3 and then released near the end of the year that would be a massive boost for the Switch. I also still have hopes (well not for me as I don’t play them but the for Switch’s lasting health) that a new Monster Hunter will arrive. Although that may take a while to allow MHW to let off some steam first.

Nintendo sometimes reminds me of Ash from the Pokémon anime. He wins a few battles and starts to think he's king of the world. Until he loses a big battle and suddenly it's like game over. But if you have faith in him you'll see that he always pulls through and he'll win again soon.

I just hope Nintendo isn't getting overconfident like they did back when the Wii U was a thing. They had an amazing fiscal year but they're going to need something really big to achieve those goals this time.

Only about 3 million to go to pass the Gamecube, and if they can achieve about 15 million, the Switch will surpass the N64. Looks pretty likely at this point, considering Smash 5 is coming and it's starting to look like Pokemon might be a 2018 game.

Well... My first reaction was to immediately shut down that prediction, but if they deliver on Smash and Pokemon alone this year, that should carry the largest amount of system sold. They will likely need help from one to two more blockbuster games at least, but the number is not as unrealistic as it seems. We'll have to wait and see.

These bold prediction have got me excited. What does ninty have up there sleeve. My guess Pokemon this finical year. Smash we know. Maybe vc could be huge for sales....if they released a 2d Zelda and Mario I think they could get these numbers

Pokémon in its normal timeslot of november (16 or 23 in Europe?), Smash in December. Monster Hurt: World port? Animal Crossing? All huge sellers in Japan, this forecast is crazy and Nintendo has something behind their back.

@Fight_Teza_Fight The ps4 launched in November '13 and the 18.5 million sales figure was in January '15 so they had 2 Christmas / Holiday periods in that.Sold through as of November 22nd 2014 was 14.4 million.I thought I had read somewhere previously that the Switch had the best first year sales..

People that don't buy systems are picking this up it's definitely very Wii like curve, my sister who liked games as we grew up together never purchased a system until the wii, but she's now got a switch too. I think it's a testament to the popularity.

It is all about the software Nintendo. You supply the games, and the Switch will sell. It'd be hard to top the launch year, but riding on the success of those games and continuing to release quality titles, both yours and from 3rd parties then you'll meet you goal.

On the one in a trillion chance someone from Nintendo actually reads this comment. - gimmie virtual consone NES/Game Boy all the way to Gamecube/GBA and I will throw hundreds and hundreds of dollars at you! Literally, if need be.

@Abaeron It did indeed have two holiday periods. It launched mid-November NA, late-November EU & Mid-Feb Japan= 4.2mil Nov/Dec 13, 14.41mil 2014.
During that period they shipped nearly 20mil units.

The first holiday period is negligible though imo as it’s a launch month. Most consoles sell out at launch (as the Switch & PS4 did).
The PS4 had ‘increased’ consumer interest due to the holiday period, but that doesn't matter as both sold out at launch.
At most you could say the PS4 has an additional few weeks of tracking.

@Heavyarms55Yeah I've dreamed/wished for that too. When the Wii-U came out I thought for sure that they would be able to get the Wii VC catalog available for it. Then we got that horrid trickle of games each week. If they had found a way to get more of them on Wii U at a much faster rate then they would have had my money a lot sooner. I had no issue at all of paying a fee to redownload titles that I had already purchased on the Wii, and then I happily grabbed the new releases that we got, such as the Earthbound games and zapper games. Hopefully we see something soon regarding their retro catalog. And I hope/beg/plead that it is not what happened with the Wii-U and only getting 1-3 games each week! The thing that infuriated me the most was when we would get one game for a certain week that was a different version of one that was already available (such as Metroid Zero Mission, Super Mario Advance...)

I'm not sure why people seem to think this is some lofty, unrealistic goal. The Switch sold over 15 million last fiscal year. Systems that are successful in year one sell more in year two thanks to increased word of mouth and a larger library of titles available. The system sellers from last year will continue to drive sales. Add in Smash and possibly Pokemon on top of other quality titles like Donkey Kong or Mario Tennis and Switch will surpass that goal easily

As much as I love Metroid, Fire Emblem, and Bayonetta, they're not huge sellers. The only games I could see moving units like this would be a Pokemon, a 2D Mario, Smash Bros, or an Animal Crossing. I could also see a big third party port (like the rumored GTA V or Call of Duty) moving quite a few units because of the portability. Unless Nintendo somehow thinks the Labo will take off and become the must-have toy in town by the holiday season (not for me, but there's certainly potential there).

20 mil seems realistic. Besides the games people have been mentioning - Pokemon and SSB - there's also hardware to consider. If sales slowed Nintneod could always drop the price a bit, say $279, or let more retailers put it on sale. Or bundle in a game to make it look like a better value. Or drop the dock, Grip and HDMI cable for a $199 Switch Labo Edition. Or make new colors.

Of course they don't need to do any of that right now b/c it's selling, but they could announce something in September for the holiday if they needed to hit that number.

@johnvboy Thank you for pointing this out-- I see the claim that Metroid (Metroid Prime 4 recently) will move some consoles. I have decided that the 'gaming journalists' and a vocal minority online don't realize that Metroid is not a big seller, never has been. But in their little world Metroid is a system seller (which it isn't) just because they like it.

I wish it was a huge seller, I love Metroid (especially the Prime games), but I also know that they don't sell much. I know that each Metroid game released could potentially be the last game due to somewhat low sales.

It's either Nintendo being overconfident or they're releasing Pokémon as well as Smash this Christmas. If we also get Yoshi, Fire Emblem and my sneak suspicion of a NSMBU port to add to 3D Mario/Zelda/Mario Kart/Splatoon/DKC etc. they will clean up.

If the late year line up is much worse than that, it's fall flat on face time.

I really think it's only a matter of time, kids need a cheaper system for Pokemon, $249 3DS proved that's too much for a handheld. Unlike a screenless Switch Home, which I'd like, but I don't think it's ever coming. Certainly not without Netflix, PS TV was a utter flop.

Very nice results for this first year of sale!
And the 20 million consoles sold during this new fiscal year, for me it's quite possible: Pokémon end 2018 / early 2019, Super Smash Bros and Fire Emblem should allow them to get there. Especially they will be supported by the new Yoshi, Octopath Traveler, Mario tenis aces, Ys VIII and many others who, certainly, do not have the strength to sell consoles per million but that will justify just purchase of the console.